Paid in advance or not, they were told they were welcome to leave.
Advised to, really.
“No one will blame you if you go. In fact, that’s the smarter move, and you should consider it.
“If you choose to stay, you’ll get no extra pay. And likely no thanks, for everyone else you know will be gone.
“If you choose to stay, you’re on your own.”
Dave was a dedicated law enforcement officer.
He believed in what he was doing.
He chose to stay.
To be honest, though, that was partly because of Julianna. He had a major crush on her. But he wouldn’t tell her because he knew that to her he was just a friend.
Julianna didn’t want to get involved in a romance with him.
He’d already moved his mom and dad and little brother to Arkansas.
She didn’t want to live in Arkansas.
She wasn’t sure where she wanted to live, exactly.
But she was positive it wasn’t Arkansas.
In all likelihood, when their job was done, they’d go off in two different directions and never see one another again.
She knew he was in a bad place.
She’d been burglarized before herself. She remembered the feeling of being violated.
She remembered feeling her home was somehow soiled by the disgusting creeps who rooted through her stuff.
She remembered staying a couple of nights with a good friend before having to go and clean up the mess the burglars made.
So she understood that Dave needed someone to talk to. Someone to commiserate with.
A couch to crash on for a night, maybe two.
Since she was a friend she’d offer him all that.
Since she didn’t want a relationship that’s all she’d offer him.
There was a knock on the door.
She answered it, and all her resolve dissolved into thin air.
There was something about the look on his face.
The drawn cheeks, maybe, or the sad puppy dog eyes.
He needed a hug. That was apparent.
She reached out her arms.
He wrapped his around her.
For a moment she melted into his arms.
But only for a moment. Then the spell was broken.
She pushed him away.
“Ewww!” she exclaimed. “You smell like a sweaty pig.”
He took no offense, for he knew it was a true statement.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t get a shower because I was too busy taking inventory and trying to figure out what they took.
“Then I was too busy filling out a police report.
“Then I was too busy talking on the phone to dispatch, so they could put out the word so that everybody could keep an eye out for my bike.”
“Is that all they got? Your bike?”
He sighed.
“I wish. They took everything I had of value. My coin collection, my jewelry, my collection of Beanie Babies, my…”
“Stop. Right. There. Did you say you collect Beanie Babies?”
“I did once. I still have them. Or did until today. Look, it’s a long story.”
She sat on her couch and tucked her feet beneath her.
“I have time. Tell me about it.”
“Look, it was years ago. My mom got me into it. I only kept them so I could pass them down to my daughter some day. When I had one, that is.”
“What else did you lose?”
“My autographed baseballs. Several hundred dollars in cash I had in a drawer, pretty much everything I had of any value.”
“And your bike?”
“Yes. My blue racing bike. I told dispatch that’s what they should watch out for. The other stuff is small enough to stash anywhere. But a blue Eagle Wing racing bike will stick out like a sore thumb on the back of a pickup truck.”
“Not if it’s in a moving truck.”
“You’re supposed to be cheering me up here.”
“Sorry.”
“Hey, do you mind if I go get a shower?”
“I would consider it a personal favor to me, stinky man.”
“Which way is the bathroom?”
She held her breath and pointed, then pushed him down the hall into the bathroom.
He went in and closed the door.
She smiled and yelled, “Try my lilac body wash. It’ll make you smell pretty.”
Chapter 15
What began as a slowly moving ooze of hot lava transitioned into a faster-moving pyroclastic flow, rolling relentlessly at less than a hundred yards an hour, yet consuming everything in its path the way an adolescent consumes pepperoni pizza.
It moved to the south and the west, down the natural terrain headed straight for Turbid Lake, unwilling to stop or even pause for anything in its path.
If the area had been dry it would have started a forest fire.
But it had been rainy of late and the area was very damp.
That was to the detriment of people who lived in the woods as well as people like Dave and Julianna, for they had to slog through wet grass in their efforts and get eaten alive by even more mosquitoes than normal.
But the wet grass hindered burning, and at least kept them from getting consumed by a wind-swept wildfire.
In that way the rain was their friend, and they didn’t stop cursing it long enough to know it.
That wasn’t to say things weren’t burning.
The lava river was only eight feet wide at this point, but as it continued its relentless downhill path toward Turbid Lake it enveloped pines, firs, and any other tree which got in its way.
Each trunk, when surrounded by the two-thousand degree lava, accepted its doom and simmered from within, the dry interior wood burning even as the wet outer layer kept it from erupting into flames
The base of the trunk, under pressure not just from the fire but also the molten rock pressing against it at several hundred pounds of pressure per square inch, didn’t take long to topple over.
The doomed tree would then topple into the forest, still smoldering but not in danger of spreading fire in the wet foliage.
It was nice that the ooze didn’t start a major fire.
But that in no way meant the forest, and the people living or working in it, weren’t in extreme danger.
All it meant was that the opening act of this disaster was a slow-moving event.
Not to worry, though.
All over the world people were watching in rapt anticipation.
There were many, especially in the Muslim countries, who’d long blamed America for their ills.
Many of those same people considered the pending eruption of Yellowstone as nothing more than the United States getting her due for those perceived transgressions.
They needn’t worry about the slow pace of the eruption at this stage.
For this was just the beginning.
The fireworks would come much later.
As Dr. Wayne Hamlin explained to wife Julie over coffee at their kitchen table, “Yes, this is like Kilauea, but also not like it at all.”
“What do you mean?” she very rightly asked, for it seemed a nonsensical comment.
“The upper magma pool, the magma closest to the surface, has a lower content of explosive gasses.
“That’s common of a lot of volcanos. Kilauea is the best example.
“Since it has a low content of explosive gasses it’s not being pressured to come out of the ground. It therefore oozes.
“It’s like when you eat something that gives you a bit of gas. It rumbles around in your stomach and might make you uncomfortable. But it’s not in that big a hurry to release the gas because there’s not much of it.
“Look at it another way. Say you eat something that gives you a lot of gas. An explosive amount of gas.
“You might go running to the restroom because you know it’s just a matter of time before that gas forces its way out.
“Then picture your abdomen o
n a much larger scale.
“Say, an earth size scale.
“Relate your stomach to a volcano.
“The waste in the stomach is like the earth’s magma pool. The gas in your stomach is like the gas content in the magma.
“If you have a little bit of gas in your stomach, it’s typically not a problem.
“But if you have a lot of gas it is.”
“So… Kilauea has a little gas so the magma will work its way out a little at a time.
“But Yellowstone has a very high content so it’ll blow all at once.
“In other words you’re saying Yellowstone is more like Mount St. Helens?”
“Well, yes and no. It’s not that simple, because Yellowstone is rather unique.”
“How so?”
“With Yellowstone we’ve recorded different pools of magma with different gas content.
“The magma just below the surface, say the first thousand feet or so, has a relatively low content of sulfur gas.
“The subsurface at Yellowstone is very rocky.
“The upper magma pool appears to be separated by a hundred feet or so of solid rock. Rock which hasn’t melted yet and is keeping the two pools of magma from mixing.
“The pressure from the gaseous lower pool is forcing that rock divider to press outward. To bubble, if you will, which is in turn pushing the low-gas magma above it to find its way out of the ground.
“That’s why fissures have been opening up and new geysers are presenting themselves. To help relieve the pressure.
“That’s why the upper pool magma will break ground soon, if it hasn’t already done so. To help relieve the pressure. It’ll present itself as oozing lava, just like Kilauea did.
“Here’s the scary part.
“As the pressure in the upper magma drops it’ll push less against the rock that’s holding in the lower magma. The lower magma will exert more and more pressure against that rock divider until the rock pops like a balloon.
“Then all that lower magma will explode outward, coming out at once and taking a sizeable portion of the earth with it.”
As Wayne and Julie spoke the lava continued to slowly flow from that crack in the earth north and east of Turbid Lake. Slowly, relentlessly, it rolled down the gentle slope of a hill toward the water, almost as though thirsty.
When it reached the water’s edge, though, it would create a much bigger problem.
Chapter 16
It had been a full day since Rocki and Darrell left the small town of Hesperia, California, but their visit was bothering them both.
“It’s possible we were had. You know we’ve had people try to hoodwink us before,” she said.
“I know. But I didn’t get that feeling about Bud. I got the feeling he was legit.”
“Yeah. I know. Me too.”
They’d visited the ranch of Bud Holliman, a cattle rancher who lived a few miles outside of the little town.
Bud’s ranch was on the edge of the high desert. Joshua trees grew there better than grass. Yet he was quite successful in keeping a healthy herd of over two hundred cattle.
His passion, though, was horses.
“A cowboy without a good horse is just a guy in a funny hat.”
That’s how he greeted Rocki and Darrell when they arrived at his ranch.
Rocki immediately wrote down the quote so she wouldn’t forget it.
It seemed to sum up Bud’s whole philosophy about who he was and what he did and seemed a perfect opening to his story.
As for his story, Rocki and Darrell were a bit leery at first.
About his tale for the love he’d had for Cheyenne, his trusted friend for a dozen years.
“We went through hell and high water together,” he said. “Once I took him cross country, into the southern end of the Rocky Mountains. Just him and me and a rifle and a bedroll.
“We got caught by a late season blizzard.
“Then I got lost. First time in my life I was really truly lost, and the weather was so bad I just couldn’t get my bearings.
“I’d given up. I thought we were goners.
“And he managed to find his way back out to flat ground.
“You can’t go through that with a horse and not love him for it.”
That much of Bud’s story was believable. They could see in his eyes he’d lost his very best friend when Cheyenne passed.
The thing was, though, the passion in his eyes never changed when his story went from believable to highly suspect.
“He still comes to see me sometimes,” Bud swore.
“Always when I’m in the stables. I’ll hear him sigh. I’m hear him neigh. If you’re not horse people you probably don’t know this. But every horse has a whinny or neigh all his own. It’s as distinctive as a human’s voice.
“And once you grow to love a horse you’ll never forget his neigh, any more than you’ll forget your own mama’s voice long after she’s gone.”
They’d sat there, in Bud’s den, for over two hours. They talked of horses and cattle and where the term “all hat, no cattle” came from.
“It means a man who wears a cowboy hat but who’s not a cowboy,” Bud told them. “He wants people to think he’s a cowboy but he owns no cattle. He’s likely never set foot on a working ranch, and probably don’t know which side of the horse to mount.
“In other words, the only part of him that’s a cowboy is his hat. Take that away and he’s just another city slicker.”
They talked of Bud’s wife, gone fifteen years, and he pondered with tears in his eyes why Mary never came to see him but Cheyenne did.
“I reckon she’s got her reasons,” Bud lamented. “She always had good reason for the things she done.”
The pair finally asked Bud to show them where Cheyenne once lived.
He took them to a four-stall stable out behind his ranch house.
Now empty of equines, the stable was used for storage of many other things, like tools and leather goods.
Only one stall remained empty.
Chapter 17
“That’s Cheyenne’s stall,” Bud explained.
“I haven’t had the heart to put anything in it, for fear he’ll stop coming back to visit,” he said. “I’m afraid he’ll think if I put stuff in it that I’ve moved on and forgotten him. And that’s not the case at all.”
“How often does he come to see you, Bud? And does he look the same to you?”
“Oh, I never see him. I can hear him. But I can’t see him at all.
“As for how often he comes to see me, that varies. Sometimes I come in here to grab a tool or do some cleaning and he shows up.
“Other times he doesn’t. I never really know when he’s coming and when he isn’t.”
“Why do you think that is? That he doesn’t always come when you’re out here, I mean?”
“I don’t know. I’ve reckoned that maybe he can see me from wherever it is he is. But he was old and slow in his last years and didn’t always feel up to moving.
“I reckon he’s still the same way. If he feels good and he’s in the right frame of mind he’ll walk over to say hello.
“If he’s not up to it he’ll take a pass.”
Bud showed them around the stable but of course they saw no sign the dead horse was going to bless them with his presence.
They finally walked out of the stable and headed back toward the ranch house.
“Do you still ride?” Darrell asked his new friend.
“Oh, yeah,” Bud replied. “A real cowboy rides pretty much every day until the day he dies.
“I just don’t take care of my own horse anymore. I lost the desire on the day Cheyenne died. I knew I could never find another horse like him, so I didn’t even try.
“I’ve got a general stable over by the bunkhouse where a couple of my hands take care of all the horses. Every morning I go over and climb on whichever one is saddled and ready to go.
“Now that my buddy’s gone the rest are just
horses, and nothing more.”
As they neared the house Bud suddenly stopped dead in his tracks and cocked an ear.
He smiled and put a finger to his lips, then whispered, “Be quiet and listen. Here he comes.”
Rocki looked at Darrell and noticed the same look of skepticism on his face she had on hers.
But they did as Bud said. They remained quiet and listened.
They heard, in the darkness, a huff and a neigh. They were subtle, as though the horse making the sounds was speaking under his breath.
They heard the “clop clop clop” of a horse’s hooves on hard ground.
The sound came out of the darkness and seemed to move right past them.
At that point the hair on the back of Darrell’s neck rose.
Rocki felt an inexplicable sliver.
Neither were working cowboys like Bud was.
But both were from Texas and had grown up riding.
Both knew the musky smell of a horse.
And both recognized the strong scent of a lathered horse as it walked slowly past them.
Bud said, “Excuse me. I’ll be right back.”
Rocki and Darrell gave the old cowboy his space.
They watched as he walked back toward the stable.
They couldn’t hear what he said, but watched as he carried on a long conversation with an old friend.
One he couldn’t see but knew in his heart was there.
After several minutes he stood there, hands folded in front of him, and stared off into space as the “clop clop clop” moved away from him.
Even after they faded away in the darkness he maintained his position.
For several more minutes he stayed away. Then he seemed to snap back from wherever he was back to the here and now.
He went back to the writers and led them back inside the house.
From that moment on he didn’t say much. He was courteous and answered their questions, but it was obvious his mind was somewhere else.
“You didn’t tell us about the smell,” Rocki said to him.
“I beg your pardon?”
“We could smell Cheyenne as he walked past. You didn’t prepare us for that.”
He pondered the comment, then chuckled.
“You’ll have to forgive me for that.
The Yellowstone Event (Book 5): The Eruption Page 5
